


You'll Always Have Me

by moonmoth (greyvvardenfell)



Series: Fictober 2019 [13]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23570104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/moonmoth
Summary: Reyja and Julian recover after the war and the revolution.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Julian Devorak/Original Character(s)
Series: Fictober 2019 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696495
Kudos: 2





	You'll Always Have Me

**Author's Note:**

> For the Fictober prompt: "You could talk about it, you know?"

The horrors haunted him. Every time he closed his one remaining eye, the darkness flashed with exploding shells, bloodscent and tear gas fouling the air. He knew, he _knew_ , it wasn’t real… was it? Not anymore. Right?

“Julian?”

Sitting up in bed, his head in his hands, Reyja stirred beside him. Even her gentle touch on his shoulder made him flinch. “S-s-sorry, love,” he managed, barely controlling the tremor that howled at him like a winter storm against the last autumn leaf. “Bad dream.”

Reyja sat quietly for a moment, far too long for his comfort. He had tried so hard to keep all this from her, to hide how far he’d fallen in the years since the war. It was easier when they had the Revolution to distract them, but when food grew too scarce and hope too scant and their allies started disappearing one by one, leaving Russia seemed not only prudent but urgently necessary. They crossed the gulf into Finland and eventually made their way overland into Norway. Reyja’s idea, that. It kept them safe and together. But sometimes he forgot they weren’t in Petrograd anymore. Or Bessarabia. Or Galicia. The memories followed him no matter how far he fled.

“You could talk about it, y'know. With me. If you wanted to.” Reyja shifted and their old mattress shifted with her. “If you can.”

Julian swallowed hard. He knew she meant it. But the words to describe what he’d seen, to recount all the blood in which his hands had been soaked or all the bones too broken to be reset that he’d needed to saw away or all the many lives he’d watched fade from the eyes of men too young to die… for the first time, he couldn’t find them. It was just nightmares, all the way down.

“I-I know that, darling.”

And he did. But he couldn’t. Not this. Not yet.

She was close to him now, close enough to see the gleam of sweat across his broad back and the heavy, dark circles under his eyes. “Can I hug you, lovely?” she asked softly. “You look like you need it.”

Bless her. He nodded, holding back tears. But they burst through anyway when she slid her arms around his waist and nestled herself against him, resting her chin on his shoulder and cuddling him tight. He crumpled forward into his own lap, but, like she always did, she moved with him.

“It’s okay, Juley, it’s alright. Everything’s okay. We’re safe here. You’re safe here.”

He clutched at her hands, weaving his fingers with hers as though she could save him from drowning in his own thoughts.

“That’s it, you hold onto me. You can always hold onto me. We’ll support each other.”

Minutes passed; shuddering, shaking minutes as he cried himself out in her embrace. Reyja rubbed a soothing pattern between his shoulder blades while his last hiccuping sobs faded into wheezed breaths, then the hush that followed like the sea after a storm. Or a battlefield when the armies have gone and only corpses and barbed wire remain littered over the scarred land.

“I expected…” Julian began, clearing his throat of the thick tears that still stuck there. “I expected the war to be over when it ended. But it’s like I relive it every day.” He slumped back with a long sigh. “I’m tired, Rey. So tired of it all.”

She nodded, answering his sigh with one of her own. “So am I, lovely. We both got a lot more than we bargained for.”

Both…? Then he remembered. She’d seen it too. She’d navigated the shell holes and heard the gas attack whistles and counted the seconds between the boom of the guns and the explosion of ammunition to fall asleep at night. She spent almost two years driving that ambulance for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, and it wasn’t even her war. Had she stayed in America, she would’ve remained ignorant of it all. But that wasn’t in her nature.

“Oh, darling. The things we do to ourselves, hm?”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “Hey, now. None of that. I just want you to know that I’m here for you, alright? I understand. And I know you know that, but I needed to say it.” She changed her massage to light scratching and Julian relaxed, his tension easing. “That feel good?”

“Wonderful.”

“Good. You can talk to me when you’re ready, Jul. Whenever that is. But right now, do you want to try to get back to sleep?”

He looked over his shoulder at her. However had he come to find such a treasure? “I think I could manage that, if I have you.”

Reyja chuckled and leaned in to kiss his forehead. He was no longer trembling. “You’ll always have me.”


End file.
